Mr. Speaker, the premise of the member's question is, frankly, wrong. Maybe if he actually picked up the parliamentary budget officer's report he would see that there would be savings to our health care system if we brought forward a national pharmacare plan.

Let us try this on for size, for the member's information. A year's supply of a drug for cholesterol, called atorvastatin, costs roughly $143 in Canada, but in Sweden, it costs $27, and in New Zealand, it is a mere $15. The number of prescription drugs in Canada that cost more than $10,000 per year has grown almost tenfold in the last decade. If we think about where the savings could be found, we could actually do this. For fearmongers to say that we cannot afford to do this is wrong. There has been report after report, and now the parliamentary budget officer says that it is the right thing to do and the economical thing to do.